ECCO: East Coast Chamber Orchestra

The Musicians of ECCO

Your correspondent has been attending People’s Symphony Concerts (PSC) on-and-off for the past 20 years.  PSC seeks to serve the citizens of the New York area by presenting classical music performances of the highest caliber at affordable ticket prices.  I started in college and never stopped.  Some of the most moving musical experiences of my life have been at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts.

One of them was last Saturday, when I had the great pleasure of hearing ECCO: The East Coast Chamber Orchestra.  This spectacular Orchestra started in 2001, when a group of young musicians – mostly colleagues and friends from leading conservatories and music festivals across the country – envisioned the creation of a democratically-run, self-conducted chamber orchestra that would thrive on the pure joy and camaraderie of classical music making.  That joy is evident in each of their concerts, and abundantly clear in their first-ever commercial recording, which I picked up after the concert.  The CD includes Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings n C Major Op. 48, Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op 110a and the exuberant and surprising La Follia Variations for String Orchestra, arranged by ECCO’s own Michi Wiancko after Francesco Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso No. 12 in D minor.  Please do yourself a favor – buy this CD.  You will not be disappointed.  In fact, you can get a better taste of ECCO on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvUmuER6Ngc. 

Saturday’s concert started with a lilting performance of the Divertimento for Strings in F Major, K. 138 (1772) by Mozart (1756-1791).  This was followed by Variations on a Theme of Brank Bridge, Op. 10 (1937) by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), which contained a great many amusing passages and considerable wit, flawed, perhaps, by the absence of a unifying emotional theme.  I have often found it curious that 20^th Century composers are so identifiable by their sound, and how disjointed their emotional appeal can often be.

ECCO then provided an expert interpretation of Fantasias in 4 Parts (1680) by Henry Purcell (1659).  Baroque music has never been my particular forte (I always thought that if it was Baroque one should fix it), but this piece had, for this listener, an unusual emotional attachment and genuine sweetness at its core. 

ECCO closed the evening with another 20^th Century composer, Bela Bartok (1881-1945) and his Divertimento for String Orchestra, Sz. 113 (1930).  As if fitting for the evening’s closer, the Bartok was the most moving and entertaining piece in the concert.  At turns moody, romantic and joyful, Divertimento could only have been written at that strange moment when the world prayed that war would not come while knowing, at heart, that it was inevitable.  A “Divertimento” is written to entertain both the listeners and the players, but the occasional melancholy in this piece can still be felt.  It was the last work Bartok wrote before fleeing Nazi-sympathetic Hungary.

ECCO has a prominent presence on Facebook.  Become a follower and learn of their concert schedule – they are not to be missed.

A Medley of Christmas Carols Part III: Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly

Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly is a popular, secular carol of Welsh origin.  Mozart uses a bit of it as the theme of a composition for violin and piano; later, Haydn used it in the song New Year’s Night – proving that great artists only borrow the best.

The words Follow me in merry measure suggest that the singers would dance about as they sang, much as they would in a ring dance, the original meaning of the word carol.

The tune was first found in a musical manuscript by Welsh harpist John Parry Ddall (1710-1782), but is believe to be much older than that.  The version we are most familiar with today was found in The Song Book, edited by John Hullah, published in 1866.  The translated lyrics are attributed to Thomas Oliphant.  The lyrics of 1877 and 1881, known best by contemporary readers, are:

Deck the hall with boughs of holly,

Fa la la la la la la la la.

‘Tis the season to be jolly,

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Don we now our gay apparel

Troll the ancient Christmas carol,

Fa la la la la la la la la.

See the blazing yule before us,

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Strike the harp and join the chorus.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Follow me in merry measure,

While I tell of Christmas treasure,

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Fast away the old year passes,

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!

Fa la la la la la la la la.

Sing we joyous all together,

Heedless of the wind and weather,

Fa la la la la la la la la.

 

 

The Young Mozart Playing the Organ by Heinrich Lossow

A marked change from yesterday’s picture, don’t you think?  Well … on second thought, perhaps not quite so much.

Let’s look at the picture first, and note what it does right.  Here two monks, one young and beautiful, the other older and somehow fretful, listen to the boy genius Mozart play the organ.  Some kind of musical worship is clearly planned, as can be seen by the music stands at the ready.  The fresco barely visible above the young Mozart’s head and the columns, cornices and elaborate moldings indicate that the church is rather a grand one.

Note how Lossow separates Mozart from the monks.  Not only is he elevated above their heads by the organ chair (which is also on a platform), but also by his elaborate blue coat, stockings and richly dressed hair.  Lossow further frames Mozart by separating him from his surroundings by the pillar on the right and the doorway at the left.  The sense of elevation is important … not only is Mozart literally above the monks, but he is metaphorically closer to heaven.

Lossow does, I think, a commendable job on depicting the church.  Like most churches, its coloration and light change depending on one’s vantage point, and the sense of massive space and monumentality is caught with what is really a minimum of detail.  The columns, archway, bit of fresco are there – but our imaginations fill in the rest.

Where the picture fails, I think, is the poor job Lossow made of foreshortening Mozart, as his overall proportions seem more dwarfish than youthful.  Also, a greater contrast of expression between the younger and older monk would have provided Lossow with the opportunity to make some deeper comment … an opportunity that is somewhat wasted here.

However, I think it is interesting to look at this picture with Lossow’s other work in mind.  Remember that Lossow was a pornographer of some note, and that yesterday’s picture of the rapacious sphinx also had a strong carnal undercurrent.  Simply put, what we see in The Young Mozart Playing the Organ is a forbidden pleasure.  Whether through fear of interrupting the boy genius, or because of burdensome strictures of their religious order against musical indulgence, the monks here are clearly enjoying a pleasure that they should not have.  It is of a piece with Lossow’s seeming preoccupations.

In that light, that is why I think Lossow missed a bet by not underscoring the expressions of the two monks with greater emotional detail.  It was an opportunity to tell a narrative on the effects of either pleasure awakening, or pleasure denied for years.  What is a simple, almost kitschy picture could have had true narrative heft and physiological insight.

More Lossow tomorrow.

Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard Part IV: Don Juan and the Statue of the Commander

I had thought of ending the week with another example of the Neoclassicism of Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1780-1850), but when I came upon this, I could not resist.

My readers are doubtless familiar with the story of Don Juan, the well-known libertine.  There are countless versions of the story, from Moliere and Corneille to Mozart and Byron.  The painter Eugene Delacroix (1798 – 1863) was particularly taken with Mozart’s opera, writing “What a masterpiece of romanticism!  And that in 1785!  … the entry of the specter will always strike a man of imagination.”

Delacroix was writing of the finale, where the ghost of one of the Don’s victims comes to escort the libertine to hell.  This picture looks so unlike most of Alexandre-Évariste’s oeuvre that I cannot but help but think it had some special significance for the artist.  It’s a little picture, no more than 16x13, and hardly on the scale of his deliberately executed Neoclassical masterpieces.  The brush strokes are clearly visible, and it is painted with a loose vitality that has more in common with the Impressionism that was still decades away than the Neoclassical ideal it would eventually shun.

Don Juan here is clearly heroic: with his athletic stance, burning torch and pointed beard and mustaches, he looks more like a figure from a swashbuckling novel than a dissipated roué.  His torch illuminates two ghostly female figures … other victims, or fellow neighbors in hell?  In most of the artist’s pictures, the figure of the Commander would be depicted in finicky detail, each chink and join of armor would be visible, along with showy touches, such as light reflected upon the metal.  Not here – the ghostly figure is suggested by some thickly painted brush strokes, the face no more than a few well-placed shadows. 

That this moment in the Don Juan story held some kind of import for Alexandre-Évariste is evident – he painted it more than once.  Why, I wonder?  It does not take an armchair Freud to see that the Commander is clearly a father figure.  Did Alexandre-Évariste have regrets about the way he treated his father?  Not only did he burn Papa Fragonard’s drawings, but he seems to have sat idly by while the old man was destitute (living by the good graces of another Neoclassicist, David.)  I can’t help but think that this picture is clearly tied to the artist’s psyche.  He paints Don Juan handsome and athletic – certainly the way that most of us see ourselves, despite what our mirrors tell us.  But this heroic figure is still undone by the physical, patriarchal figure of his past sins.  It does not seem to stretch the imagination too much to think that the events may be operatic, but the thoughts are autobiographical. 

If the picture was prophetic – that there is a hell and poor Alexandre-Évariste is indeed roasting marshmallows with other artistic villains like Cellini and Caravaggio – one can hope that he still has access to paint and canvas.  Work like this would merit a trip to the lower regions, if only for a visit.

Abraham and Isaac by Jan Lievens (c. 1637)

Yesterday we looked at how Caravaggio depicted the dramatic moment in Genesis 22 when Abraham is about to murder Isaac at God’s command, and how he is stopped in his bloody work by an angel.  Today, we travel north to see how artist Jan Lievens envisioned the immediate aftermath of the story.

As Genesis 22 reads: And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

Jan Lievens (1607 – 1674) was a celebrated North-Netherlandish painter and etcher. He is often compared to his friend and colleague Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), and both artists were the pupils of Dutch painter and teacher Pieter Lastman.  (Lievens and Rembrandt would share a studio for some five years, and some scholars had trouble attributing work between the two artists.)  Lievens was a child prodigy, and he left his humble origins when he was 10 years old (his father was a tapestry worker) to train with Joris Verschoten.  Lievens was only 12 years old when he began his career as an artist (!) and, like Mozart, was celebrated for both his talent and his preciosity.

One of Lievens’ paintings found its way into the hands of James I, who invited Lievens (who was then 31) to become a painter to the English court.  After that, Lievens knocked about the European art world, working in Antwrep, acting as court painter in The Hague and Berlin, and later returning to Amsterdam in 1655.  He met with great success throughout his life, but in 1672, after the Rapjaar (the “disaster year” that found the country ravaged by war and internal strife), Lievens was nearly destitute.  Despite once having a considerable fortune, his family found that there was no inheritance to be had.

This picture, painted around the time Lievens was 30 years old, shows Abraham holding Isaac immediately after sacrificing the ram.  Lievens was living in Antwerp when he painted this canvas, and it is possible that the years he spent in London with Anthony van Dyck (1599 – 1641) influenced his coloration and brushwork. 

Where Caravaggio perhaps saw nothing but zealotry and madness in the situation of Abraham and Isaac, Lievens enigmatically captures something of the (necessarily) conflicting emotions of Issac.

The bloody carcass of the ram lies in the foreground, along with the knife almost used to end Isaac’s life.  The sacrificial pyre is lit and, in contrast to Caravaggio, there are no houses or sign of people in the distance, only a sky heavy with dramatic heavenly portent.  Where Caravaggio provides Abraham with the bland and placid visage of a zealot “just following orders,” Lievens portrays a web of complex emotions on the old prophet’s face.  As Abraham looks up – one cannot help but ask is Abraham thinking, thank you Lord for saving my son or is he thinking are you sure you don’t want me to do this?  Look at the arm that embraces Isaac – one cannot be terribly sure if that is the clutch of affection, or the vice-like grip of someone reluctant to let his victim go.  The right hand, too, wraps around the boy’s shoulder – in that hold, Isaac is not going anywhere.  (And it’s all fairly moot, as is implied by Abraham’s empty scabbard and spent knife – in this affair, at least, Abraham has been rendered impotent.)

Much more interesting, to my mind, if the face of Isaac.  Though looking heavenward in roughly the same direction as Abraham, is his the face of a child looking up into God’s majesty, or of a terrified boy in the clutch of a madman?  The ambiguity of Isaac’s face is hiding in plain sight:  where one might easily see a boy staring up at God, another might just as easily see a child looking for whatever it is his father is gazing at and missing it.

And that is leads to another question that is certainly implied here but never addressed in the Old Testament: how could Isaac ever again trust Abraham?